Platinum Life: Country Preview

Platinum Life: Country

There’s just something about social games that keeps attracting celebrities. Musicians, in particular, seem to love Facebook games, with everyone from Lady Gaga to Jimmy Buffett starring in a game of their own. And now we can add country music superstars like Rascal Flatts and Big & Rich to that list, as Country Music Television has teamed up with Heatwave Interactive to release a new Facebook game called Platinum Life: Country.

Though it’s full of celebrities, Platinum Life: Country puts you in the role of a nobody: just another singer with dreams of making it big in Nashville. You can create an avatar using a pretty solid wealth of customization options, and then it’s off to the clubs.

You start the game in your own personal town, which you can customize by buying decorations, as well as buildings like shopping malls and movie theaters. But the most important building of all is the club where you do your performances. Getting up on stage and singing, curiously, plays out like a card game. You select a few cards from a hand and depending on what you select your performance will either go well or poorly. There’s a strong element of luck, it seems. Eventually you’ll get to take your show on the road and play in cities like Dallas and Nashville.

At this point the gameplay seems to be fairly basic. There’s not a whole lot of strategy to the card game and the city-building is relatively bare-bones, with few options. So the deciding factor for many players may just be how much they like country music. And on that front, Platinum Life: Country succeeds.

The CMT license permeates the whole experience right from the very beginning. When you first start the game you’ll select a mentor who will guide you through the experience, and each and every option is a well known musician. Throughout the game a continuous loop of country hits play, and it looks like eventually you may even be able to watch music videos via the in-game theaters.

Country fans won’t have to wait too long to find out what the game is all about. Though it’s in closed beta now, Platinum Life: Country is expected to launch on Facebook tomorrow.